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PUBLIC ORDER VS. INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

A recent survey showed that 80 percent of US citizens believe the American legal system that supports freedoms and makes America different from all other countries on the planet. Concentrating more on public order than individual rights would decrease, the crime rate, fear of crime, and terrorism in the United States. Greater public order lowers crime but limits individual rights; laws concentrating on individual rights tend to create public disorder and high fear of crime.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' formulation of liberty is that "each individual should have the maximum liberty consistent with the equal liberty of all other individuals" (Tarr, 63). America is founded on the value of the individual and that value is often expressed in the right of to privacy. Today, we are faced with the threat of terrorists who can hide within our borders and kill scores of citizens in a single act. The government must have the ability to discover the presence of terrorists and to stop them before they commit such acts as the attack September 11. Thus the issue of privacy must be looked at in light of the question of national security - the security of every citizen of the United States (Wilkinson, 208).

One of the terrorists who participated in the attacks on September 11, 2001, had been put on a "terrorist watch list" after he was spotted meeting with known al-Qaeda terrorists in Malaysia. In fact the FBI had agents